Politics

County gains $2.5M in final FY '15 tax numbers

By Bill Moss, Published: July 23, 2015

Henderson County got a financial lift just two weeks into the new budget year.

Tax Assessor Stan Duncan reported to the Board of Commissioners last week that the county collected $2,466,527 more than his office had projected when it calculated the total tax base and revenue from all sources in the spring of 2014.
The tax administrator, who is in charge of both appraising property and collecting taxes, underestimated the total the county would collect from real property taxes, motor vehicle taxes and personal property taxes and public utilities. The tax base, made up of motor vehicles, real property, personal property and utility-owned property, ended up to be 1 percent higher than the original projection.
The single biggest change came in the total taxable value of motor vehicles, which came in 10.5 percent higher than projected. That’s mainly because of the state’s new tag and tax together law, which requires car owners to pay their license plate fee and county property tax at renewal time. The state Division of Motor Vehicles, which now collects the motor vehicle tax and tag fees and sends the tax proceeds to counties. Based on the state’s month-to-month data, Duncan raised the motor vehicle tax projection for 2015-16.
Counting the state DMV collection rate, Henderson County had a collection rate of 98.4 percent.
Only delinquent tax collections from past years came in short of projections in the fiscal year that ended on June 30. The tax office collected $1.8 million in back taxes, penalties and interest, which was $121,000 less than projected.
“It reflects that we are very conservative in the way we budget things,” Commissioner Michael Edney said of the $2.5 million gain, which goes into the county’s reserve fund. “We underestimate income and overestimate expenses and management accordingly.”